A Detroit Poet and Her City as Muse

Rhonda Welsh knows Detroit and its devilish side. After all, this urban poet grew up in the city and still lives here. She's no fool. She has watched the television shows, read the newspaper headlines, heard the radio broadcasts. The bad stuff? It's mostly true.

But so are the moments of beauty, peace, discovery, quiet contemplation. From her perspective, the world doesn't change when you cross the border from Detroit to the suburbs. She can see Southfield and Farmington Hills from her house – and those places have the same strengths, the same struggles. To her, it's all Detroit, and it's all good. (More on Time.com:See pictures of the remains of Detroit)

“I live on the West side. I definitely don't want to gloss over the problems here because I see them and I'm aware of them,” Welsh said. “But I'm surrounded by families, kids taking lessons, people fixing dinner, people going out and about. So, sometimes, when you watch the news and you see how Detroit is depicted, it's hard for me to understand.”

That is where poetry comes in. It is one of the ways Welsh deciphers what is around her, the epiphanies of everyday life.

Here's one thing she's learned: Detroiters keep going. They take the best of what's given to them and run with it. Sure, they are impacted by the negative, the noise, the neglect. But most just keep going. So she might have had to step over broken glass to get to the library. She did it, and she read until she was full. (More on Time.com: See TIME's special report "The Committee To Save Detroit")

“Of of the things that inspires me is the driven in this city,” Welsh said. “There is such an artistic scene – there's the Detroit Institute of Arts. There's the Kresge Foundation (giving grants and fellowships). There's a strong underground movement. … If we don't have something, we make it up. … I'd like to think I have my foot in all of those worlds.”

Welsh just wrote her first book of poetry: “Red Clay Legacy.” Her parents inspired the title. They are from Georgia, and her father came here to work in the Ford plant in 1954. Everyone thought they should come North because it would be wonderful here. … And it really wasn't that much better, Welsh said. It was harder to survive, family values were lost and there were lots of lonely latchkey kids.

Words, spoken and written, became her hideaway. Her influences were many: Gil Scott Heron, Phoebe Snow, Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni. So was her life around Detroit: the Michigan State Fair, Eight Mile, Eastern Market, Belle Isle. (More on Time.com:See 10 things to do in Detroit)

Her family had its struggles, too. Her parents thought she was crazy to want to be a poet, so she kept it largely hidden. She graduated from college, got her degrees, got jobs. She tried public relations, and it stuck. One layoff turned her back onto poetry – and jobs related to writing. Suddenly, she was a working poet. She recently found a home at the College for Creative Studies, and they understand her and her passion for writing.

“Art is a job. That's something that people don't get. There's a creative part, and that's the part that's amazing,” Welsh said.

Her poetry collection is about her early life, her spiritual life, her marriage and now. It is one part poetry and one part memoir. There is a poem about Detroit – about how Detroit has been her only home. For so long, Welsh wanted out. In fact, she compares herself to George Bailey from “It's a Wonderful Life,” always thinking elsewhere was an escape. (More on Time.com: See a TIME special on how Detroit lost its way)

“Every time I tried to leave this city, it never happened. So I thought about it, and I decided something. I'm still here, so I should try to impact change,” Welsh said.

Like many others, she assumed Detroit was a dead end. Instead, she realizes it is alive and needs a little patience to get it right this time.

<a href="http://twitter.com/TheDetroitHouse" target="_blank" class="beforetweet">TheDetroitHouse</a> After a year of learning, observing and understanding, TIME says goodbye to Detroit. Podcast: All Good Things... http://shar.es/0V3I7 - 4 years ago

NICHOLAS FISHER, expert at Stony Brook University in New York who took part in a study which found that bluefin tuna contaminated with radiation believed to be from Fukushima Daiichi were present off the coast of California just five months after the nuclear meltdown.